President-elect Trump has announced that entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this past November, the pair explained that they have a sweeping mandate to cut the overreaching contra-constitutional federal bureaucracy “down to size” and “deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.” They said they will first focus on identifying executive actions that can be taken to rescind “thousands” of regulations that exceed the statutory authority of the issuing agencies. These dramatic regulatory rollbacks will support significant agency staff reductions in force and other cost-saving administrative reforms. Musk and Ramaswamy alsopromised that DOGE will cut the size and cost of government by challenging the constitutionality of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and identifying executive actions that can be taken to materially improve the cost-effectiveness of the government’s procurement process.
The panel discussion in Part One of this program, Department of Government Efficiency: Opportunities and Challenges (Part I) discussed the main challenges that DOGE will face as it attempts to fulfill its sweeping mandate within the eighteen-month time limit set for the task. These challenges include the certainty that widespread resistance to DOGE will be mounted by interests benefitting from the status quo, the complexity and length of the typically contested process required to rescind existing regulations, and the strength of the widely held conflicting belief that administrative reform efforts should be focused on improving regulation rather than simply eliminating regulation. Part II of this program will continue a discussion of the challenges that DOGE will face, and will also identify some specific executive actions that could mitigate at least some of these challenges.

Featuring:

Abhishek Kambli, Deputy Attorney General, Office of the Kansas Attorney General
J. Kennerly Davis, Senior Attorney, Former Deputy Attorney General for Virginia
(Moderator) Casey Mattox, Vice President, Legal Strategy, Stand Together